


Resident, Ordinarily Resident and Domiciled

by Thea_Bromine



Series: Kaleidoscope [5]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 14:43:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thea_Bromine/pseuds/Thea_Bromine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xander doesn’t know where he is, or where he ought to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Resident 1 - Where's Home, Xander?

He noticed, as if from a distance, that even after three days, his hands were still shaking when he thought about it. He had managed _not_ to think about it much after the first twenty-four hours, but it had been an effort.

The telephone system was weird. He was pretty much accustomed to that now: everywhere he went had a different system and Giles had laughed when he had described one, laughed and said that his grandmother had lived in a country village with a system like that, where everybody could listen in on everybody else’s phone calls.

Funny to have come across something which _Giles_ thought was old-fashioned.

He didn’t have enough of the local language to ask how the system worked and get an answer he understood, but he knew by now how to show people a number and the little map of the world in the front of a battered two year old diary and to point to England. If there was a telephone system at all – and there wasn’t always – the person who ran it could go from there. From the look of things, this wasn’t a fancy modern one. The sleepy looking man who had taken his money had made a call of his own, and then spoken to Xander, loudly and clearly and completely incomprehensibly. Xander had looked blank and the man had taken him by the elbow and led him next door to a rather dusty little café, pointed at the machine on the counter and held up two fingers. Right. So either it would take as long as for Xander to drink two cups of coffee, or he was insulting Xander in that manner that Giles used when he’d been drinking. Or Spike when he was just being irritating which was always. And which Giles had said, last time Xander was in England, was absolutely nothing to do with Agincourt, that was a myth. Some day there would be time to stop and breathe, and Xander was going to ask Giles what an agincourt was and what it had to do with Spike being rude.

It did occur to him that if he was babbling even in his own head about Spike and Giles and rude gestures, he probably ought not to drink any more coffee, specially not if he was going to talk to Giles who wasn’t good with the Xander-babble at the best of times.

Which this was not. His mind skittered sideways from that, because that only led him back to _why_ his hands were shaking. This was not the best of times because... because he could look at his out of date diary, and the page after the maps was time zones and he was only two hours out of line with Giles so maybe that wasn’t so bad after all.

He wished he could say that Giles was only two hours away.

He wished he could take two hours and be where Giles was.

He wished that he could have two hours of being where Giles was.

The coffee was very strong. It wasn’t always. He’d been surprised by that. He’d expected that there would always be good coffee in the places where coffee came from, and sometimes there was and mostly there wasn’t. The second cup was _such_ a mistake, but that was why his hands were shaking. It was.

A small boy appeared at his elbow, and tugged at his shirt, smiling shyly and cupping a hand to his ear. International sign of ‘the weird American’s call has gone through’.

“Xander? Is, is that you?”

“Giles.”

“Did, did you find her?”

“Yeah. But somebody else found her first.”

Giles’ tone sharpened. “Oh?”

“Dead.”

It was an unreasonably clear line for a telephone in a hut in a village he didn’t know the name of in a province he couldn’t _pronounce_ the name of in a country which he suspected hadn’t _been_ a country when he’d been failing to learn geography. He heard Giles catch his breath; he heard a sound which his mind told him was spectacles landing on the desk. He heard Giles preparing to give Xander his undivided attention; he always did when it was these ones. He always managed somehow to give Xander something which would allow him to go on to the next one.

“Demon?”

No. Human. Demon deaths were bad enough, often bloody enough, shocking and terrifying and the rest. Human killers, he had begun to think, were worse. She’d been dead less than half a day, he reckoned, when he had found her. Long enough for the men who had done it to be gone beyond any chance of finding them. Not long enough for the animals and the flies to have destroyed her. Not long enough for Xander to have been unable to see how she had died, in what pain and fear, and from the blood and... and other things, for him to suspect how long it had taken her to die, and how much the men had enjoyed it.

It wasn’t the first time. He had dumped it all on Giles, more than once, on crackly telephone lines in hot rooms, once with trains rattling in and out behind him, once from a tiny country airport, once in a cheap hotel which he suspected to be a brothel. He had coughed up descriptions of dead girls, and mourned them with Giles, girls whose names neither of them knew.

Then he had gone on to the next one, able to do it because he had packaged up rage and fear and guilt and pain and sent it down a telephone line to Giles. Sometimes he wondered what Giles did with it at the other end.

“Xander?”

His throat closed.

“Xander? Are you still there?”

“Yes, I... there’s another one, somewhere up country, I think. I heard a story. I’ll... I’ll go.”

“Xander, talk to me. Where are you?”

“Dunno.”

“Are you, are you all right?”

No. But he couldn’t say so, he couldn’t say anything. His lips moved but nothing came out.

“Speak to me, Xander.” Giles sounded angry but Xander knew better; this was Giles worried.

“I can’t... I just...” It was his only extravagance in this country: speaking to Giles up the length of the planet. He lived from one call to another like a teenager calling his girlfriend, not that he thought of Giles _that_ way, but he would have half a week of remembering what Giles had said and half a week of remembering things he wanted to say to Giles, and any week he didn’t get his call was a bad week. He allowed himself to talk to Giles about things that weren’t just to do with the slayage and the girls, and Giles, who was paying for the calls, never tried to shut him up and make him keep to the point, so maybe Giles did actually know how much Xander needed to talk to him.

Maybe Giles understood more than he pretended. After all, Giles could speak however many languages it was, and he said that he could understand a couple more. Maybe one of the ones he understood, but didn’t speak, was Xandertalk.

“Did I tell you that Andrew’s in love again?” That was Giles, just starting to talk. Never a stammer. Xander sometimes wondered if the stammer wasn’t actually real, if Giles just put it on when he wanted more time to think about what he was saying. He’d noticed that... he couldn’t remember. Giles was talking but Xander couldn’t make it out, he wasn’t saying anything that Xander understood. Not that it mattered. Xander just wanted to listen to Giles talk. Giles’ words weren’t like Xander's own. Giles’ words were angular with ts and ds like corners; when Xander talked it was all rounded. Xander mislaid the ends of words; Giles had a stock of them, probably rescued from Xander's mouth, and he used them all the time.

He listened and presently he realised that Giles was talking, just ordinary stuff, and occasionally he was putting in a question.

“Xander, where are you?”

“Here.”

“And where is ‘here’?” Oh, that was so not good. Why was it not good? Not a snap of either irritation or amusement, just a question as if Giles really wanted to know. So why was it not good?

“I dunno. I’m... it’s just where I am. I haven’t anywhere else to be. I’m not lost,” he hastened to add. No, he didn’t want Giles thinking he wasn’t where he should be.

“Are you sure?”

And hey, somehow that sounded like a loaded question. He thought about it.

“Where else do you think I should be?”

“At home, perhaps?”

He couldn’t breathe. He’d lived from moment to moment since he’d been sixteen, always knowing that he was the extra, the one who didn’t have anything much to offer, but he’d never have expected to hear that.

“I – am I fired, then?”

“ _What_?”

The coffee wasn’t agreeing with him, it was sitting in his stomach like demon spawn, alive and moving and vicious. Viscous. Viciously viscous. Where had he got the word viscous from? Must be one of Giles’ words which had got away. Wasn’t one of Xander's.

“I’ll... I can’t afford to go. Not from here. Can you... Willow would buy me a ticket and I’d pay her back when I got a job. I...”

“Oh Christ. Xander? Xander! Pay attention.”

“Sorry. I just don’t... I wasn’t expecting it. I don’t know where to go. It all fell into the ground, you know? And I don’t...”

“Xander, _pay attention_.” That had snap in it. Now Giles was mad. No, he wasn’t. He did that thing with his mouth when Xander said he was mad, said that his sanity had been questioned often but nothing had ever been proved and that if Xander meant that he was angry, why didn’t he say so?

“I’m... I’m listening. Sorry, Giles, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m...”

“Oh fuck. Xander, shut up for a minute. Listen to me.” Oh, that was The Voice. He hadn’t heard The Voice in years. He didn’t want to hear it now, it meant Giles was really ma... really angry.

“Where’s home, Xander?”

“Oh, I know that one! ‘When you have to go there...’”

“No, Xander, not that. Where is _your_ home? Where do you live?”

He shrugged. It was a stupid question, not that he would say so to Giles. And shrugging wasn’t smart, either, Giles couldn’t see him.

“Answer me, Xander.” That had snap in it again.

“Dunno. Wherever I am, I guess.”

He heard what sounded like another ‘fuck’. Not like Giles. Giles was more careful on the phone than that. He swore, yeah, sure; when he was really ma... really angry, he swore with a range and accuracy that Xander envied, but he was careful in front of other people, and he took the view that phone lines weren’t private.

“Listen to me. Are you listening?”

Xander was. That was The Voice. Xander didn’t have the option of not listening.

“Where you are, is there somewhere you can stay? Somewhere to sleep and eat?”

“Yeah.”

“You are to stay there until you hear from me.”

“But I’m going up-country to look for the other girl.”

“You are not to do that. You are to stay there until you hear from me.”

“It’ll only take me few...”

“Xander, _you are to stay there until you hear from me_. Is that clear?”

“Yeah.”

“It might be a few days. You’re not to go anywhere unless I tell you to. Repeat that back to me please, I want to be sure you understand it.”

“I’m staying here until you tell me.”

 “Good. Xander? You’re not fired.”

“Oh. Shall I go up-country and...”

“ _XANDER!_ Who is your employer?”

“Well, duh, Giles, you are. Had you forgotten?”

“So who tells you what to do?” The Voice. That was more in The Voice than Xander had heard since... since a time he wasn’t thinking about.

“You do.” He sounded sulky and about sixteen.

“And what have I told you to do?”

“Stay here.”

He stayed for three days. By then he felt better; he wasn’t sure what that had been about, except maybe shock and heat exhaustion, and if he could have got through to Giles again, he would have apologised and assured Giles that he was going up-country to look for the other girl. In fact, he probably ought to do that anyway, except that...

Except that Giles had told him – in The Voice – to stay where he was until he heard from Giles again.

“Mr Harris? Alexander Harris?”

He looked round. “That’s me.”

“My name is Timothy Greenhalgh. I’m from the British Consulate.” He stopped as if he was expecting Xander to know all about that; when Xander didn’t say anything he went on. “Mr Harris, can you show me some identification? I have various messages and documents and so on, so if I could just be certain that you are who you say you are?”

He didn’t sound at all like Giles. “How can you be British and not sound like Giles?”

Greenhalgh grinned; he was no older than Xander himself. “I don’t know, Mr Harris. That would be the Mr Giles who called us? Where’s he from?”

Xander thought about it. “Oxford? Or... I think he might have been born in London. ”

“Ah well, I’m from Newcastle.” That sounded odd, he swallowed the start and finish of the word and left almost nothing but Cass. “North. Much better than London. Identification, Mr Harris?”

He offered his passport mutely.

“Excellent, thank you. Right. I’m not clear on why we’re doing this rather than our American counterparts...” There was the faintest question in that but when Xander ignored it, Greenhalgh politely went on. “But my instructions are to offer you every facility. I have your tickets and itinerary.”

“Um... where am I going?”

Greenhalgh’s eyebrows rose. “England, Mr Harris. And I’m afraid it’s not going to be a pleasant trip. My instructions were to make it fast rather than... Well, you’ve got two changes on the flights alone. I’m afraid it’s cattle class all the way, and getting to the main airport will take as long as the rest of the trip. It took me four hours to get out here today and it’ll be at least as long going back; then there’s a train to the capital tomorrow, but it leaves at an ungodly hour of the morning and it stops everywhere. Unfortunately, going by road is worse. Your luggage will be home before you are; I understand you have a case which is to go under diplomatic cover?”

“I do?”

Greenhalgh laughed. “I’m ahead of myself, sorry.” He opened a large folder and picked out a single sheet. It was a fax, typed, with the Slayer Central address at the top. He knew the address although he’d never been there, couldn’t picture it. It said what Greenhalgh had said: Giles wanted Xander in England as soon as it could be arranged; there was a case of equipment to be repatriated – right, that would be the weapons case, but why was he not to leave it here for when he came back? – and all other arrangements were as Giles had discussed with somebody called Dundas.

Underneath, in Giles’ spiky handwriting were the words:

_Tell Xander I need him here._

Well, that was clear enough. He was going to England.


	2. Resident 2 - Time To Go Home

The journey was easily as horrible as Greenhalgh had predicted. The jeep had made him nauseous and headachy and the train had left him stupid with exhaustion. He was still confused; he hadn’t realised that Greenhalgh had actually come all the way from the capital to find him, and when he asked how the other man had known where he was, Greenhalgh had looked at him rather oddly.

“Your Mr Giles told us. Didn’t seem to know the name of the place, just gave us co-ordinates.”

Xander had thought about trying to offer an explanation for that – locator spell was his guess – and had decided muzzily that he couldn’t. He had just shut up. The first flight had been horrible too, in a little plane with nothing to make it comfortable, and which made so much noise that his teeth hurt with it. He’d been met on arrival, which had been good because he’d missed the connecting flight and he was too tired to be able to work out for himself what to do. A man called Trowbridge, who _did_ sound like Giles, had sorted out another flight for him, and had then looked steadily at him for a moment, and taken him to what looked like a staff canteen for soup and bread, and had advised against more coffee. “Battle stress,” said Trowbridge knowledgeably. “Pretty much everybody who comes through here on a blue card is the same. You’ll get sorted once you’re home. Watch what you eat for a few days; the change in food will upset your stomach. Not too much and nothing fancy.”

He had no idea who Trowbridge thought he was, or what he was assumed to have been doing, but the man had been kind in a brisk Giles-y way, and had seen him onto another flight on a rather larger plane, managing his tickets for him and obviously telling the steward that Xander was important and had to be looked after. That had been a short flight, and on arrival, all the other passengers had been made to wait, to Xander's crippling embarrassment, as he was handed over to a woman whose name he didn’t catch, but who bustled him briskly off the plane and through a crowded airport.

“Sorry, Mr Harris, but they’re on the last call for your flight already, and there isn’t another one tonight; we’ve sent the message on that you’re coming, you’ll be met.” From the way they’d slammed the doors behind him and were moving before he had his seatbelt fastened, he rather thought that the flight had been held for him, and for the first time in days, he roused enough to wonder how Giles had arranged all this.

His arrangements held – of _course_ they did, this was Giles he was talking about – at the other end too. He all but fell off the plane, clumsy with weariness and too long in cramped seats, and staggered after the other passengers towards the terminal. The woman in – where had he changed planes? Frankfurt? Amsterdam? – had said he would be met.

He didn’t allow himself to hope that Giles might come himself. He knew how busy Giles was. Maybe Andrew?

A queue. Security or immigration or customs or something, and he would be stopped, he always was. When he travelled he was usually dirty, unshaven, carrying old backpacks or duffles, badly dressed. The eye-patch didn’t help either. He might as well write ‘drug smuggler’ in his passport: he couldn’t remember how many times he’d been strip-searched, how many times he’d heard the rubber glove snap on somebody’s wrist. There was a security man behind the woman who was checking passports; he would be called out.

“Mr Harris?”

Yup, thought so.

“Will you come this way, please, sir?”

At least English security appeared to be polite. He didn’t usually get a ‘sir’, and the man was opening the door and inviting him to walk through, not grabbing and pulling.

“Ah, Xander, excellent.” And Giles was there, getting up from a plastic chair, tucking a paperback into the pocket of his tweed jacket, thanking the security man who was just closing the door behind him. 

“Giles, I... Oh, _Giles_.” He stumbled in for a hug he hadn’t known he was going to want.

“Yes, well, bad trip, was it?”

“No, it was... how did you do it?”

Giles did that thing where his jaw went hard and his lips thinned. “I know some people.”

“Easy as that?”

“Ah... The old Watchers’ Council had influence, and I’ve more or less taken that over. That was easy, it’s just the bloody money I’m struggling to get my hands on. And I was at school with George Dundas. Did, did his people look after you all right?”

“Yeah, they were good.”

“I’ll give George a call tomorrow and thank him; remind me. Your weapons case came in the day before yesterday. I did try to get you on the diplomatic flight as well, but I, I’m afraid my influence wouldn’t stretch to that, not for a foreign national. Shall we go?”

Xander blinked. “I’ve not been through passport control or anything.”

“George covered all that. You won’t be stopped, you’re invisible to immigration. Nobody is going to ask why you’re here or how long you’re intending to stay in the country. As far as they’re concerned you’re a resident. It’s the same sort of cover as the girls have. Won’t work other than here, but it’s a start.” He was guiding Xander towards the door. “What about your baggage? Is there much?”

Xander hefted his bag to his shoulder. “Just this. Once the weapons case was packed, I shoved anything I wanted in here, and dumped the rest. None of it was worth keeping.”

Giles looked at him rather oddly. “Yes... I’m sorry, Xander, I’ve let this go on far too long, haven’t I?”

“What?”

“Keeping you away from home.”

He shrugged, not certain what to say. “Don’t really know where home is any more.”

“Precisely. I suddenly realised that you had never been here, not since we took the new premises, and that although we had a room for you, it was empty, so you had no picture of your base in this country, and we had nothing that you would come back to. And I’m all in favour of you travelling light, but really, a man of your age shouldn’t be able to pick up all his worldly goods in one hand.”

“Trouble is, if I can’t... the weapons box is bad enough.”

Giles glanced sideways at him and grinned. “I know. I tried to lift it. Then I got Faith to do it. Down this way. She wanted to come with me to meet you but I thought that with your flight not due until nearly midnight and quite likely to be delayed...”

The drive was longer than Xander had expected; it felt strange to be in a car with seatbelts and controls which obviously did the things they were supposed to do, rather than one which had been cannibalised from three other cars. The light was strange too – it wasn’t as dark as he had become used to, there were street lamps, and even when they got out into the country there were lights over the roadsigns at the junctions.

“What is it you need me here for?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just, what’s with the ‘come back right now’ and pulling strings and calling in favours or whatever to get me here?”

“That was me _finally_ picking up that you were running on fumes and that I was a bad employer. I should have brought you back a year ago.”

“But the girls...”

They were passing a gas station – no, this was England, Giles called them petrol stations, didn’t he? – and the light showed him Giles with his jaw set the way he did when he was annoyed.

“We haven’t the facilities for any more girls. I should have admitted that months ago. We just can’t take any more.”

“I thought you’d got a, a school or a hotel or something, loads of space.”

Giles snorted. “The space isn’t the problem, except that we can’t get half of it into useable condition. It’s... it’s the people. Xander, I’m the only Watcher. Faith’s acting as one, Andrew of all people is acting as one, a couple of the older girls – they’re not girls, they’re women. Oksana is a doctor, thank God, but her qualification isn’t recognised here, and it’s a bloody pain trying to get drugs when we need them, because I’ve no access to anything that isn’t available over the counter. Rachel has taken over the housekeeper’s job, but that’s not ideal, she could be better used in training. We need backstage staff, we need something like a boarding school matron, and possibly a nurse, we could do with somebody with childcare qualifications for the younger girls and half of them are... well, you sent them to us, you know how traumatised some of them are.”

He did.

“We need somebody who understands money, because we haven’t got any and I’m trying to do that and I have no idea what I’m doing. A bursar or a, a, I don’t know. Everybody’s doing two or three jobs and... I don’t need to be feeding you this when you haven’t even had a chance to take your coat off, sorry.”

“Why are you the only Watcher? I thought... I know... when it... They can’t all...”

Giles rescued him. “A lot of them – God, almost all the ones who trained with me are dead. I asked for the remainder to come. Only seven were willing, and two of those are so old that... I’ve put them on research so thank the Lord at least I can rely on that. The other five... They all had blue fits when they realised that I meant them to patrol with their Slayers. One was killed the first night out, two quit on the spot, one quit a week later when he arrived at the door and I made him touch the cross.”

“What? What did he expect you to do?”

“Lord knows. He took it as a personal affront that I should even ask. I think he assumed that Watchers couldn’t be bitten, despite it not actually being that uncommon in the annals. He suddenly seemed to grasp that I would stake him if he didn’t do it, and he’d be just as dead afterwards even if he hadn’t been turned. I fired the fifth one for galloping incompetence. Well, no, not for being incompetent, but for refusing to admit it. I could have trained him but he wouldn’t agree that he needed training. He wanted...”

“Lemme guess. Wanted to do it all the way it was done under the old regime, ignoring the fact that the old regime was a huge failure and doesn’t exist any more.”

“That’s about the size of it. Only three of them were real Watchers anyway.”

Xander looked sideways. “Real?”

“I – you must know that there’s more to being a Watcher than watching. I mean you and I, we can slay, but we’re not Slayers. Not every Watcher got a Slayer, obviously, but not everybody would have been allowed a Slayer even if one had been free. Faith’s watching, but she’s not a Watcher and never will be; she’s a Slayer. Andrew... I don’t _think_ he’ll be a Watcher, but I’m not certain. So there’s me. I could do with some help.”

Xander looked at his hands. “Giles... I did what you said. I stayed where I was. But there were stories of another girl up-country. If she... If I don’t go for her...”

“If the stories are true – which is a big ‘if’. How many trips have you made which turned into wild goose chases? That’s one ‘if’. If she’s where you heard, which is another. If she’s still alive, which is a third. If she’s willing to come, that’s a fourth. And the moment you got her off to us, you would hear a tale of another girl. And another and another and another. Same as you’ve done for the last how long has it been?”

“But if it _is_ true and I don’t go...”

“Chances are she’ll die, Xander, yes, and that lies on my conscience, not on yours, because I ordered you not to go.”

“But Giles!”

“Xander, I, I didn’t do it lightly. You’ve finished your work out there. I think, I think if I hadn’t called you back, you would have been dead yourself within six months, and entirely apart from any, from any personal aspect, the plain fact is that I can’t afford to lose your field experience. You know as well as I do that the job is never finished, that no _part_ of it is ever finished. That includes searching for the girls. But I need you to stop and, and come home.” He hesitated. “If this isn’t where you want to be, if you’d rather be in Italy with, with the others, or back in America, I can, I can arrange it. Not immediately, but I can and if it’s what you want, I will, but...”

He shook his head, unable to speak for a moment. He didn’t know where he wanted to be.

He didn’t know where he was.

“We’re nearly there,” said Giles abruptly. “We... I shouldn’t have started this conversation now, it’s not fair, I’m sorry. We’ll talk about it in a day or two. I know you’re, you’re upset about the girl.”

“She’ll die,” he said numbly.

“Yes. But if you’re here – because you’re here – one of the girls here will not die.”

“You can’t know that!” He breathed hard for a moment, and then sagged back against the seat. “And I can’t know about the girl there. I gotta... I just gotta let go, yeah?”

Giles took a hand off the wheel and touched him lightly on the knee. “It’s hard, I know.”

The world spun dizzyingly, flashing between the dark spaces outside the car, the red and brown of Africa and the bleached white of airport lights. If he let go he would be thrown off and...

“I’ll get lost.” He didn’t know why he had said it or even what he meant by it, but maybe Giles did.

“I’ll find you. I know where you are.”

Another silence. “I... Sorry Giles, I’m babbling. No idea what I’m talking about. Nothing new there.”

Giles nosed the car up against a wall. “Too long travelling, and too long working without a break. We’ll see what some time off does.”

He opened a door into a large lobby. “Come and see your room. I’ll give you the full tour tomorrow, but look, my office is through there, and I have a flat at the top of those stairs. I’m usually in one or the other. This side, there are training rooms at the top, the girls’ dormitories and bathrooms underneath them, and single rooms under that. The senior girls look after the little ones, so there’s only you and Andrew and Faith and Oksana and Rachel on this floor at the moment, and Andrew’s in Helsinki. Or possibly Reykjavik.”

“Reykjavik? Why?”

“Because if he’s here he drives me nuts,” said Giles frankly. “Look, you share a, a, I can hardly call it a kitchen, but it’s got two gas rings and a sink and a fridge. Dining room is over by the office, I’ll show you tomorrow, proper meals happen there, but you’ve got a kettle here, and tea and coffee and milk. Cutlery, china, the usual. The budget puts a small amount of soda in the fridge every week, and bread and biscuits and so on, and if you want more you’ll have to get it yourselves. I think Rachel runs a petty cash tin, but she’ll tell you. It’s more like college rooms than anything else, Xander, we can’t afford luxury, I’m afraid.”

“Giles, it’s got _carpet_. And no snakes.”

“Well, yes, there is that. This is your room.”

It wasn’t large, and the furniture was mismatched but...

“Oh!”

“I, I hope you don’t mind, but Faith opened the weapons case. She and some of the girls you sent here spent yesterday afternoon cleaning the weapons, and Nqobile had the idea of making them into a wall display. Nour produced the cloth for the backdrop. They, they thought you might like to have your own things near you, and it makes the room a bit less, less sterile.”

“I – flowers? Somebody put _flowers_ in my room?”

“Rachel, I expect. And...” he waved vaguely at the shelf. “Andrew sent an email when he heard you were coming home, that we were to put those in here for you. I believe Jelena went into Andrew’s room for them, with somebody holding the other end of the rope to stop her getting lost. Andrew and tidiness are not on speaking terms.”

Half a dozen comics. 

“Bathroom through here. Not big, no actual bath, I’m afraid, just a shower, but there are baths upstairs if you want.”

“Soap! There’s soap?”

Giles laughed. “Rachel again, at a guess. Soap, shampoo, toothbrush, toothpaste, clean towels. The hot water system isn’t what it might be...”

“Running water, Giles. Indoor plumbing. Not bothered past that.”

“A week and you’ll be giving me grief about the boiler, I have no doubt. Everybody else does.” He backed out of the bathroom. “The bed is new. I insisted that whatever else came from charity shops, and pretty well everything did, the beds had to be new and decent quality.”

“ _Spiderman_ bed covers?”

“Charity shops. Be grateful for _Spiderman_ ; I’ve got Liverpool football club this week; last week I had _My Little Pony_.”

Xander sniggered and Giles pretended to glare at him. “Are you hungry?”

He shook his head. “Just tired. I’ll grab a shower and just...” he waved at the bed.

“Oh, yes, I forgot. There are some clothes in the wardrobe. _Not_ charity shops, they’re mine, actually, but enough to keep you decent for a day or two. I wasn’t sure what you’d bring home. I’ll, I’ll let you get to bed then, Xander. Have your sleep out, don’t get up until you’re ready.” He hesitated. “I’m glad you’re home. I’ve missed you.”

“Missed you too, Big Guy.” It was a little awkward; he half wanted to hug Giles again, but Giles was all with the restraint and no public displays of affection; just saying that he’d missed Xander was probably enough to lose him his buttoned-up credentials. And this was England; hugging an Englishman uninvited would probably get him deported again.

He didn’t feel the buzz until he was clean and dry and in bed. God, clean – he didn’t think he’d been half as clean in eighteen months. And a bed, a real bed, off the ground. It felt odd; at first he wasn’t sure he would actually be able to sleep in it. And then he felt...

Not a buzz, exactly. A... tickle? Not quite that either. Something comfortable, like being stroked. It felt like he imagined a cat must feel being petted. He would have liked to relax into it but... but strange sensations weren’t always safe. He sat up, reaching for the light switch, and staying his hand when he saw the faint glow from the head of the bed. Runes, painted on the wall. He surprised himself: he recognised them all. Protection runes. Restful sleep, pleasant dreams, good health, a quiet mind. Safety. Household wards, the sort of things people used to protect their homes and their families.

He laid his hand flat on the last one and felt it: the buzz, but now he felt the heart behind it. Nothing there to worry him. It was like Giles, of course, to show him that Faith had welcomed him home, that the girls he had found remembered him, that Rachel, whoever she was, meant kindly towards him, that Andrew was generous to him. But it was Giles who had painted these. He didn’t know how he knew except that they _felt_ like Giles. Tweedy wards, infused with Giles’ cologne, and Scotch, and books, and tea, and Giles himself.

They felt like coming home.

 

 


	3. Ordinarily Resident 1 - Investment

It was a week before Xander's exhaustion wore off enough for him to argue when Giles told him gently to leave work until he felt better.

“Feeling better. Now what do you want me to do?”

“What would you like to do?”

That seemed to induce a brief panic. “Nonono, that’s not how it goes. You tell me what you want me to do, I whine and complain I dunno how to do it, you glare, I do whatever it is badly, you complain...”

“Xander, do shut up. Please.”

He was sorry at once, when Xander did shut up, dipping his head nervously. The boy – the young man, he _had_ to stop thinking of Xander as a boy, particularly given that he had been doing a man’s work for years – shouldn’t be so jittery.

“Come on, come up to the flat. We can talk about what you would like to do and when you’ll be fit to do it.”

He started automatically to make tea; equally automatically he waved Xander towards the fridge. Less than a week home, and already Giles’ fridge contained cans of things he would never consider drinking.

“Have you thought about where you want to be?”

Xander had indeed matured; Giles very nearly missed the flash of panic. “Wherever I’m needed. If that’s anywhere.”

“It’s everywhere. They could use you in Italy; if you felt confident enough to go with a couple of the older girls, you could go back to the States – or anywhere else you fancied, actually. I would like you to be here, but it’s your choice.”

“Here, then.”

He was still uneasy; that answer had come too quickly.

“Sure? I’m conscious that you’ve got nothing to tie you down here.”

“Got nothing anywhere.”

And that was disturbingly true. Sunnydale was gone; Xander was about as uprooted as it was possible to be. “Could you be happy here? Or... I suppose that’s a stupid question, isn’t it – you won’t know until you try.” He hesitated. “Xander, I can certainly use you here, but, but will you promise to tell me if you find you’re not settling?”

He got a nod, and decided to be satisfied with that; there was something else bothering Xander.

“As to what you’re to do... You’ve seen the set-up. Groups of girls. I’ve got the most experienced ones, the ones who are actually patrolling. If you would like to take one of the others, maybe the newcomers? Or would you rather have the intermediates?”

Xander was looking at him oddly. “You want me to take a team?”

He looked back, just as blankly. “Of course. I thought you would prefer that to research or, or finance or admin. Was... is that not what you expected?”

Xander shook his head. “Was thinking maintenance. Construction. Fixing stuff.”

“Oh! Oh. Well... if that’s what you would prefer, I’m not saying we don’t have a need for it.” He bit back the other phrase; they _did_ need somebody to look after the buildings and Xander, of course, knew how – but somebody to take over even part of the watching...

“Just think... Just think that would be best. I mean, if it’s O.K. with you.”

He opened his mouth to say “Well, yes, but...” and thought better of it. Xander still had his head tipped forward, his eyes shadowed. He was still too thin, too drawn, too nervy for Giles’ liking. For all he said that he was rested, he didn’t look it. They owed him a long break and he obviously wouldn’t take it as proper leave. If he needed to feel that he was still working, then maintenance would be less stressful than watching.

“It means that Faith will give you grief about the hot water, rather than me. I have no problem with that, none at all. And if you can find out why the lights go out in here every time the smoke alarm goes off in the kitchen, I will grovel in gratitude at your feet. Shall we have a drink and seal the deal?”

He found this new silent Xander a little disconcerting. He found himself watching him, watching him at odd times of the day. He watched as Xander fixed things, as he made things. He watched the training rooms become bright with fresh paint; he watched pieces of equipment which they had decided they couldn’t afford to buy appear in a different, home-made guise. He watched Xander, and found him as fascinating as any of the slayers, old or new. He watched, because that was what a Watcher did, and because there had never before been a Watcher like Giles, so if Giles thought that his duty included watching Xander Harris as well as a multiplicity of Slayers, who was there to contradict him? If the Slayers needed Xander – and in Giles’ opinion, they did – then _somebody_ had to keep an eye on him and make sure that he didn’t continue to work himself into the ground.

Xander Harris with a work ethic. That was about as likely as Ripper being a Watcher, and something even less likely had begin to prod at Giles’ mind.

“I need to go to Oxford for a couple of days, Xander. Would, would you like to come with me?”

If he’d expressed an intention of falling through into fairyland, he doubted whether Xander would have looked any more startled.

“Me? What... what for?”

“Well, there are rather a lot of libraries and I need to go to two of them, but that needn’t bother you. I’m, I’m supposed to dine in my old college once a year to keep my visiting rights and so on, and I can take a guest. We can get college rooms, go midweek and you, you could do the tourist things?  You haven’t had any sort of holiday at all, and, I was just thinking... well, last time Willow was here she shouted at me for never taking a day off, and made me promise to take a week and show her some more of England. At lunchtime on the second day I walked into a wall.”

Xander gaped at him. “Say what?”

“I was so bloody tired that when I stopped _running_ my body just shut up shop completely. I hadn’t a clue what I was doing. I walked – literally – into a wall. Broke my glasses, blacked my eye, passed out and spent three days in bed with Willow and Andrew nursing me, and that alone was sufficient to convince me of the need for a more structured workload.”

Xander grinned. “Which of ’em tried to give you a bed-bath?”

Giles shuddered. “Shall we leave that with your tale of the something-or-other Ladies’ Nightclub?”

“That bad, huh?”

“I can intimidate Andrew, largely because I pay his wages, but unfortunately Willow isn’t afraid of me any more.”

“Was she ever? And it wasn’t really a bed-bath, was it?”

“Only because I threatened to scream, but Willow tried to spoon-feed me and Andrew wanted to read aloud. He’s very bad at it.”

“How come I missed all this?”

“You were in... I forget where, but we couldn’t get a call through to you and by the next weekend Willow had gone home and I was back on my feet. But the point, Xander, is that I started insisting on everybody taking proper breaks and somehow... somehow ‘everybody’ didn’t include you and I’m not sure why not. The, the only thing I can say in my own defence is that I don’t always get my days off either. I don’t go to the office, but I work in my flat. And if you tell Willow that, I will have to kill you.”  

“Hey, your secret dies with me.”

“And the earth is flat. But Oxford is pretty, and I’m sure the girls could manage without us for two days.”

They took the train to Oxford; Giles remembered it as having been almost impossible to find a parking space and he didn’t suppose it had changed much. Xander, following an afternoon with a guidebook, looked down into the courtyard from the window of his room, and turned back to Giles.

“ _New_ Court? As opposed to what?”

“Old Court, obviously.”

“Yeah, but _new_?”

“1690-something. Old Court was the original, mid-1460s.”

“Three hundred years old and they still call it new. Giles, this place is weird. Do I _have_ to come to dinner?”

“Not if it makes you unhappy, no, but I wish you would. They’re dons, Xander, they don’t bite. It’s midweek and the Warden is in Toronto at a conference, and the Vice-Warden is in London with her husband because it’s her wedding anniversary. According to the Steward, there are only about eight of us dining tonight, and I don’t know any of them either, so it’s not as if I’m going to fall into conversation with old friends and abandon you.”

Xander fidgeted. “Yeah, but... You know I don’t know how to... It’s a _college_ and they’re _English_ and I don’t know how to talk to them or anything. Or the proper way to behave.”

“Keep your fork in your left hand, and don’t greet them with ‘hey’, it’s rude. That should cover it.”

“I... what’s wrong with ‘hey’?”

“It’s what you shout after the man who has just stolen your wallet. It’s not a greeting in England. Not a polite one, anyway.”

“Yeah, well, see, that’s what I mean. I don’t know that sort of stuff.”

“So how did you manage in Africa?”

“Huh?”

“Xander, you went to Africa. You remember that? And you travelled. You travelled, extensively, among people who weren’t from California. They had different languages, they had different cultures, they had different ways of behaving. Every week you told me some story about nearly getting caught out because they wanted you to eat the goat or not eat the goat or notice the baby or pretend you couldn’t see the baby or fight the shaman or grovel to the shaman. And every week you told me how you’d worked out what you had to do, and done it. After that, a selection of Oxford dons should be a walk in the park for you: if you get it wrong, they’ll pretend not to notice, they won’t attempt to cut your throat.”

“Yeah, but...”

“Add in the chances that at least two of them won’t be English anyway and I don’t see what your problem is.”

“Do I _have_ to wear a tie?”

“And a jacket. Not because anybody at High Table would comment, but because Rachel went to a lot of trouble to make you look smart and she’ll be hugely disappointed if you don’t.” She had hauled Xander through every charity shop she knew to find him a suit which fitted reasonably well, and his shirt glowed with cleanliness. “Oh, and because I have to wear my academic gown, so if I have to be uncomfortable, I don’t see why you shouldn’t too.”

Xander sighed. “You gotta keep an eye on me. Stop me doing anything awful.”

“Don’t dance on the table, don’t throw rolls at the undergraduates unless they start it, which they won’t because that’s restricted to the rugby club and the boat club. Oh, and if they offer you the port, refuse it. It’s shaming to say, because the rest of the college cellar is excellent, but the port is vile and will give you a hangover the like of which you have never experienced.”

“Oh, I dunno, there was that coconut stuff in Cameroon. I’ve been afraid I would die loadsa times but that’s the first time I’ve been afraid I might not.”

“Come on, then, let’s go down.”

He had forgotten how impressive the Senior Common Room could be to someone not expecting it; Xander was a little distracted as he shook hands with the Senior Tutor, although he caught himself, and apologised.

“I just don’t think I’ve ever seen so _much_ fielded linenfold in one place. It’s in beautiful condition.”

“That’s down to Mr Ridley here, our Clerk of Works. He arranged for it to be restored last year. Stephen? Mr Harris is admiring your panelling.”

“I wish I could call it mine. Art history, Mr Harris?”

Xander blinked anxiously and then caught up. “Oh... oh, no. I’m not books guy, I’m a carpenter.”

“Mr Harris,” put in Giles smoothly, “is _my_ Clerk of Works. Unfortunately, I can’t give him such attractive materials with which to work.”

“Can’t do German parchment folds in MDF,” agreed Xander; “this is German, right?”

“We believe so. Have you been into the chapel, Mr Harris? The panelling there is Flemish; it’s interesting to see the differences.”

“Yeah, looked in this afternoon. Was impressed by your cope chest. It’s rare to see a ward sprung lock in such good condition. But it can’t be the original, surely?”

“The swing shackle? No. We think it was replaced in the early 1800s from another chest. And have you seen...” Ridley was drawing Xander from one side of the room to the other to show off particular decorative features which Giles himself couldn’t identify. The Senior Tutor smiled at Giles.

“Pleasant for Stephen to find another enthusiast. I’m afraid that we who live here tend to become blasé about our surroundings.”

He repeated the observation when they returned after dinner, and Xander dipped his head shyly.

“I dunno how you can. This is... you’re just so... I dunno, grounded? Envy you that.”

“Because it is attractive?” That was the tall woman with the strong accent, who had been discussing the Minoans with Giles.

“No... well, yes, of course, it is, but... you seem to feel that you belong here? Even if it isn’t where you’re from?” He backed off nervously, but she nodded. “See, I don’t have that.”

The woman frowned. “Your own home, your birth home, it does not make you feel so?”

Xander shook his head. “It’s gone. My... where I was born, it’s gone. Earthquake.”

“Sunnydale,” said Giles quietly. “California.”

There were sympathetic murmurs. The tall woman frowned again. “You do not have family to give you a centre?”

“No.” That was blunt. Giles didn’t know what had happened to Tony or Jessica Harris; Xander had said once that they weren’t dead but he had never shown any inclination to contact them, nor, apparently, they him, and Giles knew enough not to interfere.

“So are you settled here in England?” asked Stephen Ridley.

“I guess so. Yeah, I am. But I don’t feel... I dunno what’s the word. Invested, maybe? But hey, I’ve not been here long. It’ll take time, I suppose.”

They took that as it was obviously intended – as a polite brush-off, a hint to change the subject, and the conversation moved on.

Without Giles, who nursed his coffee cup, and thought.  

 

 

**  
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	4. Ordinarily Resident 2 - Seisin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Port Meadow exists, and contains all the things Giles says it does; the water meadow belonging to his college does not – I have simply rearranged a little of Greater Oxford for Xander's convenience.

They didn’t talk much over breakfast. Giles was not a morning person; he could keep going more or less indefinitely on short sleep, _provided_ nobody expected snappy conversation before the second cup of coffee, and Xander... Xander simply seemed to have much less to say for himself than he ever had before. It would have to be addressed.

“I need to go back to the Bodleian this morning; they’re pulling some court rolls for me, but I won’t be long. We, we, there’s a suitable train in the middle of the afternoon, so... have you still got that tourist information map? Well, look, I’ll meet you _there_ at eleven or so. It’s going to be a nice day; we’ll go out and play.”

Xander's expression at the word ‘play’ sent Giles off laughing – obviously Giles and play was not a combination which held together in Xander's mind. He arrived at the specified corner a minute or two before Xander – which was long enough for him to wonder if what he had planned was going to be wrong. Ritual wasn’t something which seemed important to Xander; it was more of a comfort to Giles. Still, he consoled himself, if it felt wrong when he got to it, he could just not do it. It wasn’t a real... It was. It _was_ real. The point of ritual was the intention behind it. It would be as real as Giles’ intention and Xander's acceptance.

Or lack of acceptance.

“Hey, Giles.”

“I never touched your wallet.”

Xander made a face at him. “Good morning? But we said that already.”

“What about ‘hello’? No, I’m teasing you. I don’t really mind ‘hey’. Ready to go and frivol?”

Xander looked at him suspiciously. “What ya got in mind?”

“Thought I’d take you out for lunch. Picnic.” He indicated the bag at his feet. “All from Marks and Spencer, but it should be O.K. And I have this.” He showed a large key on a wooden tag. “Boathouse. I thought we could go on the river. It’s early enough in the season that it shouldn’t be heaving with visitors.”

Xander watched with some suspicion as Giles made a careful choice among the punts, and tried the weight of the pole. “God, this feels odd. Aluminium, I gather. The poles were all wood in my day. I think we’ll go carefully, I don’t feel any particular urge to fall in.”

Xander laughed. “Have you ever?”

“Fallen in? Oh yes, a couple of times. It’s not recommended, although I believe the river’s cleaner than it was when I was here. Go on, get in. We’ll take the tarpaulin with us, and then if we want to get up the bank later we’ll not have to sit on wet grass. You can either sit at my feet and look the way we’re going, or go up the other end and see where we’ve been. Unless, unless you want to punt?”

“Last time I tried anything like that was in Africa and I _did_ fall in. And there were crocodiles. And leeches.”

Giles made a face. “Never heard of either in the Isis, _or_ the Cherwell, but the leeches wouldn’t be too surprising.” He had abandoned his tie and jacket into the bottom of the punt, and was rolling up his sleeves and unfastening his collar. “I hope to God this comes back to me, because I’m going to look a right prat if it doesn’t. I, I want to show you Port Meadow, which means going up the Isis. I’d rather have gone the other way, the Head Porter said the bottom was better, but never mind. Actually, _can_ you go up the other end? It’ll make the balance easer until I work out if I still remember how to do this.”

He did remember, he found, although the pull in the muscles of his back told him that he would regret it later. Not now: Xander looked totally relaxed for the first time since he had come home, twisting to look around him, leaning over to trail a hand in the water (Giles had leaned sideways and made the punt dip, getting a squeak of surprise and a burst of laughter), pointing out the swan with cygnets. No, for the moment he regretted nothing, and actually, a little to his surprise, he was enjoying himself too.

“I can’t remember if there’s a bridge suitable for hopping this way.”

Xander looked at him blankly. “Do what?”

“Bridge hopping. I keep the punt straight and slow, you stand up, and as we reach the bridge, you jump for the parapet. Then you have to climb the bridge, trot across to the other side, and let yourself back down into the punt without upsetting it, or missing it and falling in, or knocking me in, or standing on the picnic. Alternatively, if we’ve had enough to drink, I have to wait until you’re committed to the drop, and then slam the brakes on so that you fall in and I don’t. Then we have to get you back in the punt without it overturning. Don’t look at me like that! We made our own entertainment when I was young. And punt racing is violent, specially if you have to start by breaking into a boathouse after the pubs close. God, actually, when I think about it I’m amazed nobody drowned. We, we used to stand in the punt and run it down the rollers at Mesopotamia and you haven’t got the first idea what I’m talking about, have you?”

Xander shook his head. “Not a clue, except that when you were young you did dangerous stuff, which I already knew, sorta.”

Giles wrinkled his nose. “This was just ordinary dangerous stuff. I wish... I wish I could have my time here again and... My first year, I hated being here, because it was what I had to do to be a Watcher, and...”

“And you didn’t want to.”

“No. And I wasted so much time... I was a waste of a university place. Somebody else could have done so much better. Then I bolted, and by the time I came back... Well, by then I was older than the others, and they seemed so bloody innocent. I, I wasn’t popular, because, well because a lot of the time, they did want to play and I was working myself into the ground trying... Trying to make up for having made such a complete pig’s breakfast of everything. They thought I was dull. And then occasionally I couldn’t stand it, and I, I’d break out and do something crazy or dangerous... God, I wish...”

And Xander's hand flicked out in a sign Giles had read about but never seen made, one to turn aside bad luck. “Don’t, Giles. Just don’t. Know where wishing can take you, and it’s nowhere good.”

Giles made his own sign, a luck ward, and watched Xander relax again. “Where did you learn that? The aversion?”

“Malawi. They used it against Kril.”

“Against _Kril_? Did, did it work?”

“Not so much.”

They were silent again, until the river soothed them both back to calmness, and Xander, sleepy-eyed, asked “So what’s this you want me to see?”

“It’s here. Is there a peg on the end of that rope? If I hold the punt still, can you reach the bank from there? Ram the peg well in and pull the rope tight, and I’ll brace this end with the punt pole. I, I want you to see what’s here.”

They walked a hundred yards or so; Xander looked round him, and then questioningly back to Giles.

“There have been people here for a long time. There are about twenty archaeological sites just in this meadow. It’s common land, it was given to Oxford as a reward by Alfred the Great in exchange for fighting the Danes. It’s mentioned a hundred years later in the Domesday Book as being common land, and that’s lasted ever since. See the cows? The Freemen of Oxford can still graze cattle here, and that’s not changed since... well, Domesday Book is 1086, so a century before that. Before that again? Bronze Age barrows, some sort of Iron Age earthwork. Over there, see that bank? Underneath it, there’s the remains of stonework from the Siege of Oxford. 1640-something and I forget exactly what they found, but the Royalists were inside the city, and the Parliamentarians were outside, so probably this was something to stop the Cavaliers getting out. This century, the meadow was used in both World Wars. There was an airfield here. And, and this isn’t unusual for England. There are a lot of places like this. Just, just where people lived. Where they have lived. Done ordinary things.”

Xander was looking at him oddly. “Um, yes? England has history. I sorta knew that, Giles.”

“Of course you did. I just wasn’t sure if you felt it, if you felt it in your gut as well as knowing it in your head.”

“Do I need to?”

“No. But I thought... I, I, I, maybe I’m way off the mark here, but I thought you might, you might want to.” He looked away. This wasn’t going the way he had hoped. He had _hoped_ that he wouldn’t have to explain himself. And that, he told himself crossly, was stupid. Xander was looking rather uneasy.

“You wanna teach me history?”

“ _No!_ For heaven’s sake, America has history too, I’m not saying ours is any better than yours. And you don’t _need_ to know any of it, although it’s interesting. Well, I think it’s interesting. Hell, I’m doing this all wrong. Never mind. Ignore me. Let’s have lunch.” He turned back to the punt, but Xander put a hand on his arm.

“Hey, calm down. I’m just not getting this. What are you trying to tell me?”

He sighed. “I was trying to give you some feeling of where you are. You seem –  well, you are – uprooted and I was trying to, to, to transplant you, I suppose. To give you some feeling of belonging here. I had an idea of... I was going to... never mind. Look, we can go a bit further on. The next bit upriver is the college water meadow – it’s not common land so it comes with fewer cowpats and no tourists. Come on.”    

He had begun to find his style with a punt pole, but now he had lost it again and turned clumsy: by the time he found a little hollow in the bank into which they could nose, he was sweating, and there was river water running up his arm. Xander watched him quietly – he was completely bewildered, he thought, by this quiet Xander. Sometimes he saw the Xander he remembered, but it was only in flashes and he wasn’t sure whether the new Xander was grown up, or merely weary in spirit. He wedged the punt again, and reached for the tarpaulin. “Bring the bag, will you? Are you hungry?”

Xander was, and he was glad to see it. The man who had returned from Africa had been disturbingly thin, and his appetite had been capricious. Giles had bought nothing out of the ordinary – the sort of bread which could be torn apart, the sort of cheese which could be managed with a plastic knife, fruit, a couple of bottles of beer – and Xander finished all of his share before lying back on the tarpaulin and gazing at the sky. They had spoken of nothing significant while they ate: of the importunate duck which demanded a share of the bread, of the fact that this river was the same Thames that bisected London. Of the different sorts of bread which Xander had eaten in Africa. It came as a surprise to Giles when Xander reverted to the earlier conversation; he himself would have let it drop.

“The history’s not enough, Giles. I do... I want... there’s no link. I need... Where am I in all this?”

He hesitated. “Do you know anything about English land law?”

Xander twisted enough to give him a ‘well, duh’ look. He looked at his hands, not at the body stretched out beside him. “At one time, if you bought a piece of land, you actually had to take physical possession of it. Taking seisin, it was called. The owner would cut a piece and give it to you, and it wasn’t yours until then. Actually, they did the same thing in America to transfer land rights until 1700 or so. And even now, land rights in England are a bit, a bit odd. Like the common land down there. Common land, it’s not actually true that it belongs to everybody, somebody owns it, yes, but other people have rights to it. That bit, I told you, it’s grazing rights, but it can be the right to gather firewood, or to fish, or something. And the rights, they can go back to the time before the legal system was established here, or even before the monarchy. They’re old. Then there’s the right to roam. Footpaths and so on. There are tracks across these meadows which have probably been here since the Bronze Age and using them is a right. If you’re doing no harm walking on them, nobody can stop you. So...” He couldn’t find the words to go on with that. He backtracked a little.

“The Gileses... Everard de Saint-Gilles arrived in England with William the Conqueror. 1066. Family pride would have us say that we came from Saint-Gilles-du-Gard in the south of France, that we were a cadet branch of the family who were Counts of Toulouse and Dukes of Narbonne, but I can’t see why we would have been hanging about with William the Bastard in that case. Everard was almost certainly a Watcher, and I suspect that he just picked up the name as a protection.” He looked sideways at Xander. “Saint Giles is the one to whom you pray if you’re afraid of the dark.”

Xander laughed. “Really?”

“Really. Big hops here – the family was fairly quiet under the Plantagenets but four or five Gileses went on crusade and one even came back again. Then there was a Giles who died during the Great Famine, and the main family line was wiped out by the Black Death. It was a fourth cousin who kept the name going, and some suggestion that he was a bastard too. Literally, I mean, not just metaphorically. The name, the name went with the watching, not necessarily with the men. I mean, a couple of Giles women married and had children, and their children went on being Gileses, not Hannasydes or Wheelwrights or whatever, if they were Watchers. The Gileses sided with the Earl of Warwick during the Wars of the Roses, which was not a good choice, and the one who wasn’t killed got the idea of going off to live in the country and keep out of sight. We stuck with that as a policy afterwards, in my line of the family at least. One Giles was executed by Henry the Eighth, we don’t know what for. The Civil War wasn’t a success for us: Roger Giles was killed fighting for the Parliamentarians and his brother Stephen was a Royalist and died at the Battle of Naseby, and the Giles name and the Watching passed to James Giles who was _definitely_ a bastard, but with both the legitimate sons dead, there was some speedy work suggesting a secret marriage and James got the name and the estate, not that there was much of that left either. There was a lot more keeping very quiet and not drawing attention to ourselves, but even so, the Gileses had a reputation for being unlucky because of the way they tended to die young.”

“Watching?” murmured Xander, who had his eyes shut.

“Indeed. We skipped the major battles – we don’t tend to go into the army, not in the main family line at least, but the Gileses turned into academics. Researchers. I could show you... My father had a rather detailed family tree, all the way back to Everard de Saint-Gilles, and he married a Saxon girl – Everard, not my father – well, we hope he married her, and he probably did, because he ended up holding property, and he wouldn’t have been important enough to hold it from William, so it’s more likely that he took it by force and then pushed in with the locals by marrying a local girl to make it respectable. The Gileses have been in England... well, we’re not exactly incomers any more. That’s where _I_ am. And, and, and, if I understand you, it’s where you feel you’re not.”

He was watching carefully; he might have missed it. It was no more than a hesitation in the slow rise and fall of Xander's chest.

“Will you let me give you England?”

Xander's eye flew open. “What, all of it?” He struggled upright, staring at Giles in a mixture of laughter and bewilderment. Giles didn’t smile.

“All of it that’s mine to give you, which is the heart of it. I’m not suggesting,” he added carefully, “that you would want to stop thinking of yourself as an American. Or that you should stop thinking of America as home, if you still do. I’m just trying to, to give you a foothold here. A feeling that you have a right to be here, that you _are_ right to be here. A place to stand which is yours.”

The smile slipped from Xander's face. “How?”

Giles sagged with relief; it was a totally ridiculous conversation about totally imaginary concepts, but plainly Xander did, at last, understand what he was trying to do. “This, this water meadow belongs to the college, and I’m a Senior Member of the college, so in a manner of speaking it belongs to me. And an English water meadow is about as English as you get. I showed you what was under the soil over there.” He reached into his pocket for his penknife. “We could have done this in the garden at home, but, but we’d never have got two minutes peace from baby Slayers, and it’s, I thought it would be easier if you could see some evidence of the history.” He cut a neat square of turf, no more than two inches across, and levered it out of the ground. “Sit up.”

Xander came to his knees, watching seriously.

“I, Rupert Edmund Giles, do declare upon this blade and my honour that Alexander LaVelle Harris is seised and possessed of all of England that lies within my gift, its language and history, its people and land, and none shall take it from him but he consent.” He held out the turf and Xander accepted it solemnly in both hands. There was an awkward silence and then Giles said in his normal voice, “There, you appear to be the proud owner of one forget-me-not, some grass, a black beetle and a ladybird. Oh, and a penknife. We ought to have had a witness, but a sword oath will serve. It’s not much of a blade but it will do. We had probably better not take the turf away.”

Xander frowned and set the sod back in its place, carefully lifting the ladybird and letting it fly. “If it’s a land transaction, shouldn’t I be paying you?”

“Call it consideration for your work in Africa.”

“I got paid for that.”

“Not well. You’re due overtime. Sick pay. Unsociable hours payments.”

Xander shook his head stubbornly and Giles thought again. One of the things about being a Watcher was that if he created a ritual, it took on a life of its own, and this ritual required – he could feel it – that they should both be satisfied in the value of the exchange. It was interesting that Xander could apparently feel it too. He allowed himself to hope.

“Give me... give me some of your time. Not just as my Clerk of Works. Spend some time with the girls. Give me a month of that, and at the end of it, if you don’t want to work with them, if you don’t, don’t want to be involved with training or slaying or whatever, then I won’t ask again and you can do whatever you like. Leave us entirely, or be Clerk of Works full time, or, or whatever you want. A month, and then choose.”

Xander nodded, and slipped down onto the tarpaulin again. “Clerk of Works. I’m a janitor, Giles. Don’t try to make it sound fancy.”

“Janitor is at least as fancy as Clerk of Works. The janitor answers to Janus. God of transitions. Gates. Doorways. Keys. It’s not as common a word in England, that’s all.” And transitions... That was interesting too.

When next he spoke, it was to suggest that they must move on; Xander seemed thoughtful and Giles was respectful of his mood, concentrating on keeping the punt slipping smoothly through the water and not trying to start a conversation. It was on the way to the railway station later that they passed a bookshop, and the window display caught Giles’ eye. On the train, he passed the paperback to Xander.

“Try it. It’s, it’s a children’s book and it might be too old-fashioned for you, but try. I, I think it might have been what I had in mind when I mentioned seisin. If you can’t get on with it, it doesn’t matter, but, but I think you might enjoy it. I always did.” He left it at that, and Xander raised his eyebrows in surprise, but by the time Giles had found his own book, Xander was already turning the first page.

_The children were at the Theatre, acting to Three Cows as much as they could remember of Midsummer Night's Dream. Their father had made them a small play out of the big Shakespeare one, and they had rehearsed it with him and with their mother till they could say it by heart. They began..._

And if Xander didn’t like it, some of the younger slayers might.


	5. Domiciled 1 - Apprehension

He had been more than half expecting it, but still it arrived sooner than he had anticipated. He had given Xander a month; Transition arrived in two weeks.

The first sign of it was Xander wandering along the hallway muttering under his breath and looking at the ceiling. Given that it was unlikely to be prayer – in which case Giles would have minded his own business – he thought it advisable to ask.

“Xander? Is, is, is something the matter?”

“The goddamn lights.”

“The, the lights?”

“Can’t you _hear_ them? The whine? There’s something in the wiring and I dunno what it is, I can’t find it. I had all the ceiling tiles down earlier, I checked the wiring from one door to the other and I swear, Giles, I swear there’s nothing wrong with it. But I can hear a whine.”

“I don’t hear anything.” He was fiddling with his signet ring as he spoke.

“A high-pitched wasp-in-a-bottle sort of noise that sounds like it’s a mile away?”

Giles shook his head. “But I’m not saying you’re wrong,” he assured Xander. “I, I can’t always hear the bats in the garden now either. Age, I’m afraid. You mean the sort of noise a fluorescent light makes when it’s ready to blow?”

“Yeah. But it’s not the bulbs, I checked those too. The noise is setting my teeth on edge and not being able to find where it is...”

“If something’s going to give, you’ll find it soon enough, I expect.”

“ I guess, yeah.”

And that was all. It might have been nothing. Giles would take no action based on an electrical whine which he couldn’t hear. It might, after all, actually _be_ an electrical whine.

He didn’t think so.

Two days later he found Xander – well, he found half of Xander. He found the lower half of Xander extruding from a cupboard accompanied by a steady stream of curses issuing from the darkness.

“Is, is something the matter?”

From the thud and yelp, he deduced that Xander had not heard him coming, and had jumped and banged his head. He emerged looking irritable and fraught.

“I’ve had every single fuse out. Every one. I’m going to be _sooooo_ unpopular with everybody, because they’re all going to have to reset their alarm clocks and radio presets and whatever, and anybody who left their laptop and didn’t save documents first...”

“Why?”

“Because if the computer shuts down for lack of power it’ll lose everything since the last save.”

“No, I mean, why have you had the fuses out?”

“Because I can’t find what is making that fucking noise!”

“Language,” said Giles vaguely. “So...”

“So I took out the fuses one at a time,” said Xander furiously. “I thought when the noise stopped it would at least give me a clue as to which circuit it was. I’m not just being nosy, Giles, I’m wigged about it. It shouldn’t do that. I’m wigged in case it’s something dangerous. A fire risk. Electrocution risk. The girls... I don’t think there’s one of them who has half an idea about amperage. They’re  safe enough, or should be, putting their hair dryers on extension leads and adaptors, but I can’t get them to believe that they mustn’t put a kettle on one. And if there’s something making a noise...”

“Yes, I see,” agreed Giles, spinning his signet ring, slipping it off his finger and on again. “Is it, is it just up here?”

“No. I can hear it all over. I can hear it outside the training rooms. If I stand on the stairs in the dormitory block it half deafens me.. Some days I think I can hear it in the dining room, but there’s always so much other noise in there that I’m not sure. Giles, it’s driving me fucking _mad_! What _is_ it? Why can’t I find it?”

Giles hesitated – and Xander saw him. “You know. You know what it is.”

“I, I think I do, yes.”

“What?”

“I’m not, I’m not absolutely certain. Not yet. But I think I know. Where, where is it worst? Loudest?”

“Dormitory block.”

Giles thought for a moment. “This evening, come up to the flat. I, I think I might be able to show you then.” He saw Xander's expression change to anxiety and hastened to add, “It’s nothing bad, Xander. Well, I, I don’t think... You may not, you may not like it, but there are things... if you’re not, if you, I can stop it. I _will_ stop it for you, one way or another, but I think you have to see for yourself. Not now. I’ll show you tonight.”

“Wigging me, Giles.”

“No, no need. No danger, Xander, honestly. It’s just, I don’t know whether you want... and I’m not absolutely sure. Not absolutely. We’ll test it tonight. I need to make a couple of phone calls, make some arrangements. I’d, I’d rather not start explaining now because I don’t know the details, I don’t know _how_ to test it but, but I know who will.”

“Who?”

“My father.”

“Your... O.K., now I’m really wigged. Like totally wigged.” 

”Honestly, there’s no need. No need. Just, just trust me.”

Xander was still for a moment, and then he nodded abruptly once. “You know I... yeah.”

“You...?” prompted Giles, and Xander coloured.

“I trust you,” he muttered, without looking up.

Giles thought it best to say no more. Xander, though, for all he let the matter drop, was disturbed. He turned up at the flat as soon as dinner was over and Giles took him back down to the doorway of a room in which six noisy Slayers were arguing over a television remote control.

“Can you hear it?”

Xander nodded.

“All right. Close your eyes.” He set his hands on Xander's shoulders. “Can you now?”

“Yeah, but it... changed. Sort of muted.”

Giles took his hands away. “Keep your eyes closed. Now?”

“Loud again.”

He set his hand to the side of Xander's throat; Xander jumped and his eye opened wide. “Closed,” said Giles sharply and waited for Xander to obey him; the pulse throbbed under his fingers and he shifted his hand to get it precisely where he wanted it. “Now?”

Xander was silent for a moment. “No. It’s gone. Giles...”

“All right. We’ll go back upstairs, come on.” He opened up the flat, and gestured Xander to the couch before producing his bottle of Scotch and two glasses. Xander's knee was jumping as he sat.

“No more.... Just tell me, Giles.”

“It’s Transition. That’s what it’s called. What you’re hearing... you’re not really hearing it, you’re just becoming aware and your mind interprets it whatever way it can, as something to make you uneasy. Mine, mine was the feeling that somebody was looking at me all the time. I’ve heard of people who kept hearing their names called, or a sensation on the skin, or a slight hunger or thirst all the time. It’s quite natural.” He took a mouthful of Scotch and felt compelled to add, “Well, natural for the wholly unnatural thing we do.”

“Transition? From what? To what? For what?”

“For you. It’s the transition from, from being just, just, to being a Watcher.”

He could see Xander first absorb and then reject this, and then combine it with things Giles had said before. “What, because I’m acting as sort of temporary watcher?”

“No.” He made it as gentle as he could. “Because the, the, whatever makes it happen – we can talk about that later – wants you to be a Watcher. A proper, permanent, no holds barred Watcher. It’s not a job, Xander, you knew that. It’s a calling. You’re being Called.”

“But...” He looked accusingly at Giles. “You had training. You were always talking about it. I haven’t got that.”

“You have field experience. Think of it as a, a battlefield promotion. It wants you.”

“You’ve got, I dunno, qualifications. Knowledge. You’re books guy.”

Giles shrugged. “Not every Watcher is. My father was – is – an academic like me, but my grandmother left school at fifteen and was married at eighteen. She was given her Slayer before her twentieth birthday. My grandfather did all her research for her.”

“But you said that people watched without having to be Watchers. You said Faith... and Andrew...”

“Yes. I don’t know how it chooses. Wesley was a grade one twit, but he was a Called Watcher. So was Quentin Travers. The Slayer – in the days when it was only one – always had a Called Watcher, but there were always many more Watchers than Slayers, and that included people who had undergone the training without feeling the Call. Like, like in a mediaeval monastery. Some of the monks were genuinely religious, some were lay brothers, and then you had the oblates who were given to religion as children. A lot of Called Watchers never got Slayers, but I’ve heard of a Watcher who had never been Called, never gone through Transition, and then the Slayer died, the new Slayer was Called and he went through Transition to be with her.”

Xander was beginning to show signs of anger. “And I don’t get a say?”

“You, you do. You have choices.”

“What?”

“You can, you can just go. Leave. Be physically somewhere else. Eventually it will just wear off. I don’t know how long that would take for you; you seem to be having a very strong Call, and if you came back it would start up again. Or you can say you want nothing to do with it. There’s, there’s a spell, I can do it for you. You won’t feel it again, you’ll never be a Watcher. It’s not reversible. So... you can say no and I can, can stop it. It was used... Some of the Watcher families had a very high Call rate, and the mortality figures for Watchers are not, not...”

“Not convincing me to sign up here.”

“I can’t think that I’m telling you anything you didn’t already know. But some of the families, the Graces and the Cohens and the Shielings, and I’m sure others as well, they would make sure that at least one of every generation couldn’t be Called. To be vulgar about it, they were protecting the breeding stock. It’s very common for a Watcher to be killed with his Slayer, and the ones who aren’t, the suicide rate is...”

“Shit. And now there’s only you, and you’re telling me that Watchers _kill_ themselves when their Slayers die?”

“About one in five does, yes. Did. But Xander, that was in the time of the single Slayer. Since, since we opened up here, five of the girls have died, and yes, I’m the only active Watcher. It’s been very distressing and I’ve mourned them, sincerely, but, but I haven’t felt suicidal. I haven’t felt as bad as I did when Buffy, when Buffy... I don’t think it will work in future the way it did in the past. There’s, there’s a temporary measure too. They actually used to use it on female Watchers... the Council was an equal opportunity employer before that was a term we knew. It was used to suppress the Call on pregnant Watchers, or the ones with babies or very young children. It, it works on men too, lasts six months or so. So you could do that. You could give yourself a breathing space, and, and time to decide. It would shut up the electrical noise.”

“Or I could... what would I have to do if I said yes? There’s no training scheme now, no Watcher Central, and frankly, Giles? _So_ not doing the books thing and six languages and all that. If I have to do that, it’s not even open for discussion.”

Giles shrugged. “If you’re hitting Transition now, it wants you _now_ , as you are. There’s a, a ritual. Basically, we drug you to the eyeballs, you stand up in front of the, the whatever that’s calling – and no two Watchers see the same thing calling so I can’t say what you would meet – you say you’re willing, it looks you over and says yes or no.”

“Or _no_? It can turn me down after making all this fuss about getting me?”

Giles shrugged again. “It has happened, yes. You come away unharmed, but you’re where you were before, only the electrical noise turns off. We don’t know why sometimes it calls and then changes its mind. Presumably some people give the wrong answers in the ritual. It’s rare.”

“Answers? There’s an exam?”

Giles made a face. “No two Transitions are the same. Some people have to answer questions. Some have a, a test, have to do something. Some people just turn up and that’s it. I got shouted at.”

“Shouted...?”

He grinned engagingly. “Along the lines of ‘where the hell have you been and what sort of time do you call this?’ I wasn’t sure whether I was going to be made into a Watcher or smacked around the back of the legs and sent to stand in the corner.”

“The noise turns off if I’m accepted, right? You couldn’t hear it.”

He frowned. “Not _exactly_. I couldn’t hear yours because I could feel my own. You learn to control it, and there are... tricks. When I silenced it... You said it went quieter when I touched you. That was because I was absorbing it. When I silenced it, that was my ring against your pulse point. Most Watchers wear something to, to dampen the noise. The ring – my father gave it to me when I went through Transition. We would find you something similar. You can do it with a tattoo and a lot of Watchers do, but I was a bit, a bit uneasy about tattoos.”

“Right. But if what I hear is the Call, why does it not stop when I... if I say yes?”

“It changes. The Call is it saying ‘You’re supposed to be a Watcher; sign up’. Once you’ve been through Transition it changes to ‘You’re a Watcher; here’s a Slayer’. Every Watcher can feel the Slayer to some extent but if it’s not _your_ Slayer, it’s possible to silence the noise. But that’s how you know who is _the_ Watcher for a Slayer – the Call comes back full shriek and you can’t silence it until you accept the duty. That was how I knew Merrick was dead: my Call came back and I knew I was next. Once I met Buffy, it shut up again. But we’re surrounded by Slayers, Xander. I think you’re being swamped by fifty Slayers in close proximity. I daren’t take my ring off for any length of time or it feels like... Well, my Call feels like being watched, like people looking at me, so with fifty Slayers... you know the dreams where you’re supposed to be giving a speech to a crowd that would fill the Albert Hall, only you’ve forgotten what to say and you’re only dressed in your underwear?”

“God. Give me some more Scotch. Giles, why me?”

Giles stared at him. “I can’t think of anybody better.”

“I’ve got no, no, no watching tradition.”

“Wesley had and he was a pillock.”

“No qualifications.”

“Quentin had, and he was an arse.”

“No training.”

“Excuse me? You’ve been trained by me, and I’m bloody good.”

“I – did you _know_?”

Giles laughed shortly. “No. I wouldn’t do that to you. I was so opposed myself at twenty to the idea of watching, that even if I had known how to put you forward, I wouldn’t have done it unless you had asked. I began to suspect when we went to Oxford. There were a couple of things you said which made me wonder.”

Xander shook his head. “I – do you think I should do it?”

The desire to have somebody share the load broke over Giles like a wave; he bit his tongue to avoid begging, and bought himself time with his Scotch. “I can’t... I don’t... It’s not a ‘should’, Xander. ‘Should’ was what sank me at twenty. If, if it’s right for you, then, then it’s a ‘must’. If it’s wrong...” He hesitated. “I could, I could... Hell. Here.” He held out his ring. “You wear this for a day or two while you think about it. If, if the Call is silenced you might actually be able to think, rather than just, just...”  

Xander took it, and turned it between his fingers. “Won’t you go... it’s just a buzz. Can you manage without it?”

“For a day or two, yes. There are, there are other techniques to manage the Call in the short term.”

Xander grinned weakly. “Clean underwear and your speech notes on flash cards?”

“That sort of thing.” He watched as Xander slid his ring onto the cord around his neck to hang with his Kiffa bead; Xander caught him looking.

“You know the way the girls gossip. If I go out there wearing your ring – and everybody knows it’s your ring...  Just till I decide, right?”

 


	6. Domiciled 2 - Decision

He’d never been all decision guy, he was good at leaving decisions way past the time when they needed to be made, and then just doing whatever was left over, and he had every intention of doing the same this time. He’d do nothing and either the feeling would go away and he wouldn’t have to make a decision, or it would get worse and he wouldn’t have to make a decision.

He carefully didn’t allow himself to consider that it might stay the same – just manageable with Giles’ ring knocking against his throat – until he saw Giles the next morning. Giles looked _awful_. He plainly hadn’t slept well, his skin was grey and when Xander noticed him looking over his shoulder for the fifth time he found that the decision had made itself when he wasn’t paying attention. He didn’t know if he had only just _looked_ at Giles, if this was Giles trying to be Watcher to fifty Slayers and he _always_ looked this bad and Xander simply hadn’t noticed, or if it was the result of letting Xander have his ring, but either way it couldn’t be allowed to go on. He made his way to Giles’ end of the table and sat down opposite.

“Hey.”

“Hey, yourself.”

“Gonna do this. How?”

Thank God, Giles understood.

“We, we need another Watcher. I’ll call my father.”

“He’s one of the ones who volunteered,” realised Xander. “One of the researchers.”

“Yes. He would have come and been an active Watcher, but he’s too old, he’s got an arthritic hip and his heart isn’t what it might be. But he’s a bloody good researcher and he’ll come and ward if I ask him. There’s, there’s my Watcher’s Diary from my own Transition, I’ll give you that. It was in storage here when my Sunnydale books were destroyed, so... It won’t help a lot because, because your Transition won’t be the same as mine, but it will tell you at least how the first bit goes.”

“Drugs, you said.”

Giles nodded. “Basically, you take an hallucinogen. Then... well, tripping is a literal description. All the Watchers I know who have gone through Transition experienced it as a journey. Your sponsor – that’s me, I’m afraid, there’s nobody else – takes the drug too and it’s a joint hallucination. You won’t be able to see me or hear me, but I’ll know, I’ll witness, when you’re accepted. And sometimes you have to make the journey back the same way as you went and sometimes not.” He smiled reminiscently. “I got to drive a Caterham Seven for my Transition, or that’s what it felt like. I’d always wanted to do that. Probably nothing like the real thing. But there has to be at least one sponsor with every postulant, and at least one other Watcher, to keep an eye on our bodies while we’re... wherever we are. There have been Transitions where the, the spirit body has been harmed and the harm transfers to the corporeal, or vice versa, so now we have a, a minder.”

Xander fiddled with the flatware... no, he was in England, the _cutlery_ in front of him. “How soon can we do it? Gotta say, if I’m gonna do it, not liking the idea of waiting. Want it over.”

“Tomorrow? Tomorrow night, in the flat, if Dad can get here.”

“Yeah. And Giles...”

“Yes?”

He couldn’t go on. He freed off the ring from the twisted leather at his throat and pushed it back across the table.

“Keep it until then if, if you want.”

“Think you need it more than me. Giles...”

“Yes?”

He stuck again; eventually Giles tapped him on the back of the hand. “What’s troubling you?”

“If it says no...”

“I don’t think it’s likely. Not with a Call which I can feel when I touch you.”

“But if it does... Will you...”

“Will I what?”

Mind. Be disappointed. Be surprised. _Not_ be surprised. Wonder why anybody had ever thought that it would accept him. Think that Xander had let everybody down _again_. Sigh and make that clucking noise and...

“Can I still be here?” He spat it out, unable to express the layers of inadequacy he felt, his fear of failure, his insecurity.

“Yes.” There was no qualification to it, and it came in The Voice; Xander was a little comforted. The things Giles said in The Voice, that was just the way things were going to be. No ifs, no buts. 

Giles’ diary didn’t help much. He had no idea what a Caterham Seven was, other than some sort of car; Giles’ rather spiky notes made it clear that the postulant – which presumably was him, although he wasn’t very sure what the word meant – just made sense of the sensations caused by the drugs however he could, so Xander might feel anything. That was always assuming that Giles was right about this being Transition in the first place, and not just Xander being weird. He’d have thought Giles was wrong about it except that Giles didn’t make a habit of being wrong about Watchery things. Not any more.

The next day he palmed his training sessions off on Jelena, said he had a crisis in the central heating system, and went and hid in the boiler room. The hot water question was a sufficiently sensitive one – he was going to have to talk to Giles about whether the budget would run to a booster slave pump on the second floor – that any suggestion that Xander was trying to fix it was enough to have people covering his other jobs for him. He skipped dinner; Giles had advised it as a means of making sure the drugs did whatever they were supposed to, and he was so nervous that he didn’t think he could have eaten anyway. He showered and changed his clothes; Giles hadn’t said anything about it but it seemed... respectful.

Then he went up to the flat.    

The door was ajar, presumably for him so he pushed it open; Giles was standing at the desk, only when he turned...

This wasn’t _his_ Giles.

He’d have recognised him, he thought, even if he hadn’t known that Giles’ father was to be present. This was – this was what Giles would look like when he was old. This man must be nearer eighty than seventy but there was no softening of the straight back, no excess weight, no blurring of the sharp lines of his jaw. The hair was greyer and a little shorter, but it was the same shape.

“Mr Harris, I presume.”

He realised he was staring, and blushed. “Yeah, that’s me. Sorry.” He came in properly and stuck out his hand. “You’re Mr Giles.”

Giles Senior shook his hand, and his eyebrows shot up. “Yes, well, no doubt about what you’re doing here, is there?”

“Huh? I mean... sorry, what?”

“Rupert is quite right, that’s a very strong Call. He said it came on you extremely suddenly?”

“Uh, I dunno, I dunno what’s the normal timescale, but it got to what I couldn’t bear day before yesterday.”

“And when were you first aware of it?”

 “Week ago, maybe a day or two longer?”

“Good Lord. That’s very quick.”

“I... you think it’s real?”

Mr Giles frowned, just like Xander's Giles. “Why would it not be?”

“Xander thinks that being a Watcher requires tweed and books and the ability to swear in Sanskrit, none of which comes naturally to him.” That was Xander's Giles, leaning on the doorframe.

“Well, to be fair, Rupert, in our day it did, but there’s no point in pretending that things haven’t changed. In my day, a Watcher had one Slayer, once. You have dozens of them and they change all the time so it’s hardly surprising that we need a new type of Watcher to go with them. I’d go for Udmurt rather than Sanskrit, Mr Harris, it’s more satisfying than Sanskrit for swearing, but if you felt like learning another language, I’d recommend JavaScript or Fortran.”

Xander felt his brain slide. “You know about Fortran?”

Giles Senior made the same face as Xander's Giles when he got caught out by something. “I know what it _is_. I’m not clear on what it _does_. My tutor says I don’t need to know.”

“Your... tutor.”

“I bought a computer to help with the research. There aren’t enough of us left that we can afford to ignore the new technology, but I have to say, I’m struggling with it. I’m paying a young man from the local college to come in twice a week and teach me, but it’s a slow process.”

Xander turned an accusing stare on his Giles, who had the grace to look embarrassed.

“But really, Mr Harris, I shouldn’t worry. There’s no doubt: that’s a Call. It wants you. Presumably it’s aware that you are tweed-free.”

“That’s what I said,” added Xander's Giles, briskly. “Shall we, shall we get on?”

“Always so impatient, Rupert. Maybe Mr Harris isn’t ready?”

“Not remotely ready but I won’t be tomorrow or the next day either. Ready as I’m ever likely to be,” said Xander, shakily. “What... what do I have to do?”

Giles Senior seemed to be running the show, setting a large thick candle and two glasses of a murky liquid on Giles’ coffee table. “I think it would probably be best if you were to lie down on the sofa. We don’t want you to hurt yourself. Rupert...”

“I’ll sit opposite,” said Giles, matching the word to the deed.

“Then... if you would drink this, Mr Harris? Take it down in one, it’s disgusting, as I recall. Rupert, this is yours. And then watch the flame, let your mind go blank. Safe Transition, Mr Harris. I, ah, Rupert says I should assure you that I have your back.”

There was the zip and hiss of the candle being lit, and the click of the light switch, and only the single flame in the dark and the soft murmur of Giles Senior’s voice as he began a spell which Xander felt vaguely that he ought to know. He listened, and watched the flame, and the blue centre of it spilled into the yellow edging until the whole flame was green, green as the grass on the meadow he was passing, and the water underneath him slapped and chuckled, and Giles smiled down at him from the far end of the punt.

 


	7. Domiciled 3 - Transition

“You said that I wouldn’t be able to see you here.”

“I did, didn’t I? But you can. I told you I’d be here, I have to witness for you, convince it to take you. Does it bother you?”

Xander shook his head. It so didn’t. Going somewhere he didn’t know, to do something he didn’t understand and wasn’t prepared for, having Giles on board could only be of the good. Giles knew how things worked. And no, Giles wouldn’t let him go on his own because Giles was well aware that Xander rarely knew what he was doing. Giles would make sure that everything...

“Of course I will. It’s not as if you’re half ready to do this yourself.”

“Huh?”

“Come on, you must have grasped that this isn’t about me. It’s about you, Xander. It’s not _my_ Transition. But we both know you’ll need help.” He leaned a little on the punt pole, made the punt swing so that the water meadow spun lazily around Xander. The bag at his feet gaped so that Xander could see the picnic and the book. But Giles hadn’t given him the book yet, had he? Not when they were in the punt. Or didn’t it matter?

“Did you read it?”

He nodded.

“Like it?”

“Some of it. I liked the centurion. I wasn’t sure about the Saxon thing. I didn’t like the way the girl gave in. Too used to Slayers who don’t wait for men to give them things, I guess. I liked the one about the guns. I don’t think I understood them all.” He watched Giles’ lazy handling of the punt pole, and thought.

And thought.

It was getting dark; he didn’t know how long they’d been in the punt, but Giles didn’t seem remotely tired. The pole swung and splashed, and the water hissed along under the bow, and somewhere close by, somebody must have lit a bonfire, because he could see a glow, copper-bright and comforting. He let his eye close, and even through his eyelid he was aware of the light. It reminded him of... something, of safety and reassurance.

He thought about that, too.

“I think we’re here.” That was his own voice, not Giles’.

“I don’t think so. I think it’s further.”

“It’s my Transition, Giles. I’m gonna know. It’s here. Let me out.”

Giles shrugged and obligingly poled the punt to the bank. “I’m coming with you, though.”

“Yeah. It’s over there, in the trees.”

“Nonsense, it’ll be by the water.”

“Was yours by the water?”

Giles didn’t answer, but when Xander scrambled up the bank, Giles was just behind him.

“Xander, stop wandering off, for heaven’s sake! What on earth makes you think...”

“Shut _up_ , Giles.”

“Don’t speak to me like that! I’m trying to keep you from making a complete cock-up of this, you know. Transition isn’t easy.”

“And you think I’m likely to fuck it up.”

“I’m sure you mean well, but, but there’s no denying that you have form when it comes to...”

“Yeah. Demons and all.”

“Well, yes. It’s not too late to turn back, you know. You can, can wait a while, try again later when you’re better prepared.”

“You think I’m not ready. You didn’t think so an hour ago.”

 “I, I had forgotten what it’s like here.”

“Your dad thinks I’ve got a strong Call. He thought it would be all right.”

“He’s forgotten how hard it can be for outsiders. He’s a Giles; so am I. We have a thousand years of tradition, of, of training behind us. Our Transitions were just formalities. Heaven only knows what you’ll be asked for; I know you’re, you’re good at winging it, but you don’t understand the structure of being a Watcher. Even, even Wesley had more of an idea of that than you do...”

“Yeah, and Wesley was a dork who would have sold the Slayer out first time his own ass was on the line.”

“Well, but, but...”

“It’s over here. In the trees.”

“Xander, it will be by the water. What makes you think you know more than I do? I was a Watcher before you were born!”

He ignored it, and headed for the trees, which seemed to come to meet him: they had been half a mile away at least but he could put out a hand and rest it on a papery silver trunk. Above him a pigeon made a throaty noise, and between the trees in the dusk he could see a horse cropping the glass.

Trees and horses and doves. Some of Giles’ book stuff must have rubbed off. He knew whose place this must be.   

“Xander?”

“I... _Kendra_?”

“Oh Xander, how lovely to see you again!” She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him exuberantly.

“Uh... Kendra, aren’t you dead?”

She shrugged. “Sure, but it’s not so much of a drawback. I’ve been waiting for you; you took your time.” She looked over his shoulder at Giles, and her face hardened. “Why did you bring _that_?”

“I – he brought me. Sorta.”

“Well, it can’t stay with you. It has no place here.”

Giles flinched. “Kendra, I, I thought... we always got on so well. I, I wasn’t your Watcher for long, but I thought...”

“You’re not my Watcher. You were never my Watcher. Xander? Kill it.”

“I... what?” His stomach turned over.

“Kill it. I’m the Slayer, you’re the Watcher, Xander. Kill that. It has no business here.”

Giles was backing slowly away; he came up against a tree, against a tangle of trees, which seemed to be moving to entrap him, and somewhere behind was the golden glow of the fire. “I’m a Watcher! I’m _the_ Watcher! I’m the only active Watcher and, and I may not always, I may not, I do my best!”

Her face was shifting, wavering as if Xander was seeing her through moving water. “Xander? If you want to be a Watcher, you have to kill that and then you can have Edna’s earring.” There was a stake in his hand; he didn’t know where it had come from, although he always had one somewhere about him.

“Xander, it’s a test! She’s testing your judgment!” Giles was flat against the tree; the grass around his feet was dark and wet and the tree trunk seemed stained as if this scene had been played out many times before. Kendra smiled innocently.

“It’s a test, Xander,” she confirmed. “I’m testing your judgment.”

He shifted the stake in his hand. Anywhere in the chest would do for a vampire but for a man, the ribs got in the way.

 “Giles?”

“What?” It was panicked.

“What’s a Caterham Seven?”

“What? It’s a car. Sports car.”

“What does it look like?”

_“What the fuck are you wittering about?”_

“Just answer me!”

Giles shrugged.

“Where do they come from? Is Caterham a place or the name of the people who make them?”

“Probably! I don’t know!”

He stepped forward and Giles tried feebly to fend him away, the branches and brambles pulling his arms back and exposing his chest. “Xander, don’t, oh God, Xander, don’t, please, please, it’s a trap! You know it’s me, it’s Giles, you ought to know, for heaven’s sake, Xander, are you a complete idiot? I told you, what happens here can affect the body there, you’ll kill me, Xander, Xander, please!”

Xander was crying, his chest spasming desperately as he snatched for breath, but the stake pushed against Giles’ shirt, broke the resistance of his skin, grated on his ribs, caught and kicked in Xander's hands. It wasn’t at all like staking a vampire, where the wood just eased into undead flesh. Giles had bones and muscles and Xander had to throw his whole weight against him to make the stake go anywhere, and the blood was hot, oh God, blood heat was a literal description, and his hands were coated in Giles’ blood, Giles who had taught him just about everything useful he knew, about vampires and demons and gods, about service and duty, about acceptance and forgiveness and endurance and _love_ , and Giles was jerking and dying at the end of a stake in Xander's hands, while Xander was screaming with pain and despair.

 


	8. Domiciled 4 - Acceptance

He was still weeping when he felt the shift of the cushion beside him. At some point he had rolled himself face down and the sleeve under his face was damp, as if he had been crying for some time. A handkerchief was pushed into his hand, and he felt a comforting touch between his shoulder blades, rubbing slow circles. When he managed to open his eyes, there was a tweed thigh beside his head and he curled round until he could touch his forehead to it and feel Giles alive.

He had the mother of all headaches.

“Were you sick?” That was Giles Senior.

“No, but it was a close thing.”

“And his Transition?”

“Romped through. It was yelling for him all the way, it couldn’t get him there fast enough.”

Giles. His Giles. But further away, and memory slipped back and pointed out to him that _his_ Giles wasn’t wearing tweed, hadn’t been all day. So the man beside him, watching him cry and patting his back...

He sat up hastily and his head swam, and Mr Giles wrapped an arm around him to steady him. “No, don’t try to get up yet. Rupert, pass me that cushion. All right, Mr Harris?”

He tried to speak and it turned into another sob mixed with a cough.

“Just be patient for a moment. Don’t talk.”

God, this was humiliating. His face was wet, he couldn’t stop snivelling and no _way_ was he fit to be a Watcher.

“Relax, Mr Harris. Don’t fight it. I’m afraid Transition does tend to bear a heavy physical toll. This is not at all unusual; it will pass in a minute or two, I assure you. Rupert celebrated his Transition by vomiting over Quentin Travers’ shoes, which probably goes some way to explaining their relationship later.”

“Thanks, Dad, I really wanted to remember that. He’s right, though, Xander, this is par for the course.”

Xander hiccupped twice and took a shuddering breath.

“I’ll warn you, Mr Harris – this emotional lability might come back once or twice over the next few days. The Wyndham-Pryce boy – I believe you knew him? – I witnessed his Transition, and it took him as an extreme willingness to pick a fight. I can think of few people less able to cope with that. Gorman had to babysit him all the next weekend to prevent him being arrested for affray, and Pryce kept trying to hit him.”

Xander's Giles snorted. “I’d have paid good money to see that. Skip the Saturday film with the girls, Xander. If it’s something sentimental you’ll be fit for nothing afterwards. Better?”

He nodded, but he didn’t dare look up. And then he had to, had to assure himself that Giles’ shirt was as white as it had been, wasn’t marked with blood, wasn’t holed.

“I had to kill you. Stake you.” His voice was hoarse and his throat hurt.

Giles winced. “Ouch. I, I could see that you had something with you, but not what it was.”

“It was...” he ground to a halt and stared at them both. “Am I allowed to talk about it?”

Mr Giles shrugged slightly. “It’s entirely your choice. Some Watchers want to record their Transitions, tell people. Put it in their diaries. Others, particularly those of a religious bent, prefer to keep it to themselves. You may tell or not as you please.”

“Oh. I... You went with me, Giles. Only I knew it wasn’t really you. You were... You kept criticising. Not badly, just... Telling me I’d need your help, trying to tell me that you knew best all the time, saying I’d be fine _but_... Always with the _but._ ”

Giles looked a little awkward. “Damning with faint praise?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Trying to put me off. Saying I wasn’t ready.”

Mr Giles frowned. “Nonsense. Rarely seen a postulant so ripe for Transition.” He stood up, and moved across the room to the desk, apparently looking for something.

“See, I knew it wasn’t you, because I could see the real you as well.”

They both stared at him; Giles recovered first. “You could see _me_?”

“Well... I could see what I knew was you. There was a light, sorta. A big gold glow. That was you.”

“Are, are you _sure_? I’ve never heard of anybody being able to see their sponsor.”

Xander stared back. “Certain. I – you did those wards in my room, right?”

Giles nodded, still bewildered.

“Well, I knew you had because when I touched them I could feel you. Or...not feel exactly, but like hearing your voice when you’re out of sight. I still know it’s you. And I can... I can feel you still. It’s sorta like the buzz which is the girls and can we please do something about that real soon because it’s giving me toothache. Only with you it’s like... like knowing which side of you a fire is. I can feel you. You’re all golden orange.” He looked across at Giles Senior. “I, um, I can feel you too, sir.”

“Me?” Mr Giles looked fascinated.

“You’re blue. Strong dark blue. Not as strong as Giles.”  

“Mr Harris, what colour is Monday?”

“White,” said Xander automatically.

“And four?”

“Sorta sandy.”

The Gileses exchanged glances. “Ordinal linguistic personification,” said Giles Senior. “I wonder if it’s relevant or just chance? Mr Harris, was I coloured before?”

Xander shook his head.

“And Rupert? No? And have you always had colour associations with words?”

“Yeah. Remember finding out at school that most other people didn’t do that. There’s a name for it, can’t remember.”

“Synaesthesia,” said Giles, his head cocked on one side with interest.

“Yeah. Is it... does it matter? I mean...”

“No idea,” said Giles Senior cheerfully, “but it’s interesting. We’re getting off the point. You could see Rupert being orange. I’m not sure whether to be more interested that he was orange or that you could see him at all. He’s quite right, I've never heard of a postulant being able to see the sponsor. I wonder if that’s because you are an unusual postulant or because he is an unusual Watcher.” He had a box in his hands and was turning it over and over absently.

“Yeah. Well. He was... more gold than orange. But I could see that and I knew that was Giles so whatever was with me couldn’t be, and Kendra said...”

“Kendra?” asked Giles sharply. “Kendra Young? Is that who you saw?”

He felt his brow furrow. “Didn’t you?”

Giles shook his head. “I saw...” he stopped suddenly. His father sighed.

“Lilian?”

Giles nodded.

“Who’s Lilian?”

“My Slayer,” said Mr Giles, shortly, and with pain. There was a moment’s silence, and Giles said firmly, “You saw a previous Slayer. That’s quite usual among the postulants who have known Slayers.”

“Yeah,” said Xander, glad to move on from sensitive things. “She was pleased to see me, she kissed me, and...”

“WHAT?” That was both the other men, although Giles followed it with a whoop of laughter. He recovered himself almost at once. “You’ve gone up in the world, Xander.” He turned to his father. “Xander has a tendency to form relationships with demons. They can’t resist him. I don’t think they try.”

Giles Senior was smiling too, and shaking his head. “Kissed by the Goddess. Rupert, I think you had better resign and let this young man be Senior Watcher: she never kissed you. Or me. Go on, Mr Harris.”

“She said... she said I had to kill him. Kill Giles. Kept calling him ‘it’ and said it had no business there. I knew, sorta, that it wasn’t you...”

“Because Rupert was gold and somewhere else.”

“Yeah. But what you said about doing harm there and it hurting the body here?” He was shaking again; Giles came to kneel beside the couch.

“I’m not hurt.”

“I... it was a stake and you didn’t dust, you fought, you struggled and bled on me. You died and you were heavy. Your chest ripped open, I could see... oh God, bone, and, and, and... I couldn’t hold you up and you were dead and there was so much blood!”

Giles touched him on the knee. “Look.” He was unbuttoning his shirt; underneath there were no new marks. “Give me your hand.” He laid Xander's fingers on his chest; under the warm skin his heart thumped steadily. Xander nodded blindly.

“I knew, I did know that it wasn’t you. And I did check,” he added rather defensively.

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Mr Giles, dryly. “How?”

“I thought quite early on that it wasn’t Giles, so I asked him what a Caterham Seven was and he didn’t know, so I guessed that Giles wasn’t Giles, it was something outa my mind.”

Mr Giles cocked his head. “I don’t think I follow you?”

“Xander knew that in my Transition, I saw a Caterham Seven,” said Giles slowly, refastening his shirt. “So I ought to know what it was?”

“Yeah. But I don’t, see; all I know is, it’s a car. I dunno what it looks like or what it’s named for or anything. But if you saw it during your Transition, it would be because it was something that mattered to you, yeah? And you would know about it. So if I asked you, and you couldn’t tell me, it was because you were something outa my head and you couldn’t know something that I didn’t.”

“Oh, well done,” approved Giles Senior.

“But... she said it was a test, but I dunno what for. To see if I really would kill you if you were...” he swallowed. “If you were turned?”

“I don’t think so,” said Giles thoughtfully. “I could see it – not as me, but I could see it. A black shadow. Sometimes it, it followed you and sometimes it wrapped itself round you. And if it tried to tell you that you, you weren’t ready... and she said it had no business there? I wonder if it was your own insecurities. Your own fear of failure. She, she would want you to kill that.”

“She said I had to kill it and then I could have Edna’s earring. I dunno what that meant.”

Giles was very still; Mr Giles made one sudden movement, and controlled himself.

“That would be to my address, I think. Rupert said, said,” and that was curious, that was the first time he had stammered like Giles, “that he had quietened your Call with his signet ring. He’s told you that there are ways to do that?”

“Yeah. He mentioned tattoos.”

“They’re common and easy because they can’t be lost. I can help you find a suitable design if you would like it, but the Gileses have always tended to, to artefacts rather than to the tattoo. When he asked me to come, I looked out the ones we still have. A talisman from a previous Watcher is usually stronger than a new one because you build it up as you wear it. They don’t always, ah, agree to be transferred but we thought there might be something here which...”

He brought over the box with which he had been fiddling earlier and sat down beside Xander. Giles folded himself down to the floor, looking on.

In the box there were three or four rings, including one large and peculiarly ugly one with a red stone eye which looked as if it had been designed to be worn over armour, and a handful of small charms and things Xander didn’t recognise.

“Fashions change,” said Mr Giles apologetically. “Watch fobs were easy. The men tended to carry those or rings. Rupert said you would wear something round your neck, and I admit I had been thinking of one of the fobs, but if she said that you should have Edna’s earring...” He was sorting the items as he spoke. “I, I’m not up with that sort of fashion. My generation wouldn’t... Does a man wear such a thing nowadays?”

It was a long teardrop shaped blue stone linked to a decorated gold hoop – very feminine, but when Xander held out a shaking hand for it, it hummed at him, and when Mr Giles dropped it in his palm the silence was glorious. He looked up. “The Call – it’s shut up. And – you’re gone too, both of you, the colour thing?”

“It’s that then,” said Mr Giles, briskly; they all looked at it doubtfully. Giles was first to recover.

“Is it the whole thing or just the lapis? Xander, can you tell?” He had stood up and was searching his desk for something.

He turned it over in his hand. “It’s the stone.”

Giles came back with a pocket multitool; Xander recognised it: he had given it to Giles as a birthday present and he watched as Giles neatly nipped the hoop open and freed off the linkage, leaving only one smaller ring and making the whole shape more masculine.

“Put that on your...” he waved at Xander's throat, and Xander hastened to settle the drop with the bead at his neck.

“Good?”

“Yeah,” said Xander, enjoying the blissful silence, before it occurred to him to ask, “Who’s Edna?”

The other two were still again and there was a moment before Mr Giles said quietly, “She was my mother.”

Xander flailed. “But, but... look, you don’t wanna... your mother’s jewellery and, and I could get a tattoo and you could have it back, you don’t wanna break it...”

The other man shook his head. “Mr Harris, the other earring was lost when Rupert was still a child, and you were told that this one was yours. I’m not arguing about it.”

“Yeah, but if it’s a family thing...”

“It isn’t. Not an heirloom, if that’s what you mean. I remember seeing my mother wearing the earrings and I remember her being annoyed – annoyed, not upset – when she lost one. If it comes to you as a gift from her – and it sounds to me as if it does – then you may wear it with a clear conscience. And I think... I think that if Rupert is right about you slaying your insecurities, then you may take it as a good sign that it _has_ come to you. My mother... my mother was a very strong Watcher, Mr Harris, and a very, _very_ confident woman. Take it as a good omen.”

“Proof of acceptance,” added Giles. His father nodded.

“Not just a Watcher, but the first of the new Watchers. And the first of Rupert’s trainees to be recognised as a Watcher. I think my mother would be proud of you both.” He glanced at Giles and looked away again quickly. “I am.”

It hit Xander. “I... oh fuck. I’m a Watcher. I’m really a Watcher?”

“You really are,” agreed Giles, trying, not very successfully, not to laugh. “We’ll get you measured for tweed tomorrow. The books will be delivered the day after. Actually, I do have a book for you. In fact, I, I have two. Traditionally you get these from your sponsor.” He turned back to his desk. “Watcher’s Handbook. Read it as fiction these days and see if you have any ideas for a new edition, because I haven’t time to write one. And this.” It was a plain black book, but Xander recognised it as once.

“Oh God, do I have to?”

“Watcher’s Diary. You do indeed, starting with your Transition. Like Dad said, you don’t have to share that, but I wish you would, because, because what you said about seeing me, that’s not usual.”

There was a rather awkward silence; Xander broke it.

“Giles, have you any Tylenol?”

“Not by that name, but yes. Paracetamol. I, I’ll fetch you some.”

“What does a man have to do to get a cup of tea around here?” That was Giles Senior. “And if Mr Harris had no dinner, he must be starving.”

“I could eat,” agreed Xander. “I... would you please call me Xander? Nobody calls me Mr Harris; well, nobody who matters.”

Giles Senior smiled at him. “I shall call you Xander if you will call me Peter, and we will consider ourselves to be people who matter. Come on, we’ll fill the kettle and you can tell me your version of how you came to be here.” 

“I... was other places and now I’m home?”

That seemed to cover it.


End file.
